USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. I > Part 29
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With the exception of some minor interior alterations, and renewal of a portion of the outside siding, the "Old Tennent Church" remains substantially as it was at the time of the death of Mr. Ten- nent. The original old com- munion table is yet in use, and the charter of incorpora- tion of 1749 is carefully pre- served.
About 1727 a Presbyter- ian Church was erected at Shrewsbury, and was sup- plied first by the Rev. Joseph Morgan, and afterward by the Rev. John Tennent. In TENNENT CHURCH. 1734 the pastor at Shrews- bury (the Rev. Samuel Blair) also supplied the churches at Middletown Point, Shark River and Middletown. From all of these churches, including the "Old Scots Church," went out a wide influence, and to them is primarily traceable the extension of Presbyterian influence through a wide range of territory in the coast region of the State.
There are evidences of a church at Cape May, under the pastorate of John Bradnor, in 1714, and there were churches at other points in that region between 1752 and 1758, these including one at Egg Harbor. About 1761 John Brainerd, a man of wonderful activity, took up his abode near Atsion (in Burlington county) whence he traveled to considerable dis- · tances, ministering to the Indians, following them over the country, preaching to them, protecting them from temptations to intemperance and from the cupidity of white people, training them to fence in and sow their lands, and often succeeding in settling their disputes. His congregations usually consisted of whites as well as Indians, and after praying and preaching for the Indians in their own language, he would conduct a ser- mon for the whites in English. The crowded assemblages and the readi- ness of the people to comply with his exhortations as to erecting meeting-
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houses and preparing the way for the Gospel ministry, testify how ac- ceptable he was. Bridgeton, Bordentown (with the Indian village of Pennsborough across the Delaware). Timber Creek, Woodbury, Wepink (a Dutch settlement in that part), Salem, Penn's Neck, Cape May, Great Egg Harbor, Manahawkin, Toms River, Cedar Bridge, all these names and others carry us on his rounds over a wide district to be officered so well by one man.
The Revolutionary War practically ended for the time all religious efforts, and churches languished or were irretrievably disrupted. These conditions afflicted all denominations. In 1789 the first General Assen- bly of the Presbyterian Church was held, when four hundred and nineteen churches reported only one hundred and seventy-seven ministers.
But the inevitable reaction set in, and in 1809 the church was in such condition as to justify the beginning of a monumental work-the establishment of a Theological Seminary. The proposal was made to the General Assembly in the form of an overture from the Presbytery of Phil- adelphia. The committee to whom the overture was referred recom- mended that certain plans be submitted to the Presbyteries, and the reports received from them in 1810 led the General Assembly in that year to appoint a committee to prepare a "Plan for a Theological Seminary," to be reported to the next General Assembly. In ISII the plan reported was adopted. In 1812 the location of the Seminary was fixed temporarily at Princeton, a Board of Directors was elected, and the Rev. Archibald Alex- ander, D. D., was appointed Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology. In 1813 the Rev. Samuel Miller was appointed Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government, and the location at Princeton was made permanent.
The Trustees of Princeton College showed their interest in this set- tlement by allowing the use of its buildings to the Seminary students, and by offering space on the college campus for the erection of any buildings necessary. They also engaged that there should be no Professor of Theol- ogy in the college as long as the Seminary remained in Princeton. The classes were held at first in Dr. Alexander's study, and later for a time in the college building.
In 1815 the Assembly determined to erect a hall which should con- tain both the lecture rooms needed and lodgings for the students. The corner stone of this building, now known as Alexander Hall, was laid in that year, and it was first occupied in the autumn of 1817. It was built upon a tract of land containing seven acres, which had been purchased for the use of the seminary. In 1820 the Assembly authorized the Professors to appoint an assistant teacher of the Oriental Languages of Holy Scrip-
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ture; and in the same year they appointed to this office Mr. Charles Hodge, a graduate of the Seminary, and a licentiate of the church. Mr. Hodge accepted the appointment and was ordained. In 1822 he was elected by the General Assembly to the Professorship of Oriental and Biblical Liter- ature.
August 12, 1812, the first seminary session commenced. Three students were present and fourteen were matriculated during the session .. In 1822 the Legislature passed an act incorporating the "Trustees of the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church," and with this incor- poration the seminary was constituted as at present. During the ninety years of its existence, five thousand and seventy-three students have been. matriculated. Of these, two hundred and eighty-six have entered upon. foreign missionary work.
The library, which is in the two buildings erected for it in 1843 and 1879 by the late James Lenox, LL. D., of New York, contains 68,400 bound volumes, chiefly theological.
Stuart Hall, an admirable structure, erected by Messrs R. L. and A. Stuart in 1876, affords most ample and complete accommodations in the way of lecture rooms and apartments devoted to other public uses of the- institution.
Alexander Hall, long known as the Old Seminary, was the first build -. ing erected by the Presbyterian Church in the United States for seminary purposes. It was first occupied by the students in the fall of 1817. It is now a dormitory.
Brown Hall is a memorial of the munificence of Mrs. Isabella Brown, of Baltimore. The corner stone was laid by the Moderator of the General Assembly on the 21st of May, 1864, and it was occupied in the fall of 1865. It is the dormitory of single rooms.
Hodge Hall, built out of money bequeathed by Mrs. Mary Stuart, widow of Mrs. Robert L. Stuart, of New York, was completed during the summer of 1893. The rooms are in suites, each study having a separate connecting bed-chamber, or, in the few cases where the study is to be shared by two occupants, a separate sleeping apartment for each.
Here we are to consider the powerful Anabaptist influence, and it is to be premised that the Anabaptists have been too much confounded with the Quakers, or Friends.
December 19, 1645, Governor Kieft, of New Amsterdam, granted a patent "in both the Dutch and Englishi" to Lady Deborah Moody, Sir Henry Moody. Bart., Ensign George. Baxter, Sergeant James Hubbard and their associates, for lands on Gravesend Bay, Long Island. It is said
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of Lady Moody that she made too long a visit in the city of London. Hav- ing a home elsewhere, the law permitted her to be absent from it only for a limited number of days. This law was probably strictly enforced in her case because she was found to be in sympathy with some of the re- ligious sects then growing strong and numerous in the city of London. She left England and came to Massachusetts. There she and her friends were persecuted because they opposed infant baptism. Hoping to find peace with the Dutch they obtained the Gravesend patent. For the pro- motion of colonization, the Dutch were at this time offering an asylum to the persecuted colonists of New England.
It has been said that Lady Deborah Moody was a Quakeress, and her followers were persecuted members of that sect, but this was not possible, for George Fox did not begin to preach the doctrine of his sect until two years after the granting of the Gravesend patent, and ten years before his persecuted followers began to flee to America. Roger Williams arrived in Salem about 1640, and began to preach against infant baptism. He was an Anabaptist-a follower of the Swiss Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, whose principles had a most powerful influence in the development of the United States, and especially among the people of Rhode Island, New Jersey and the Middle West. Because of the political importance of those principles we quote the following summary of them from a mono- graph on "The Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century," by the Rev. Henry Sweetser Burrage, D. D., published in "Report and Papers of the Third Annual Meeting of the American Society of Church History," Decem- ber 30-31, 1890:
"I. That the Scriptures are the only authority in matters of faith and practice.
"2. That personal faith in Jesus Christ alone secures salvation; there- fore, infant baptism is to be rejected.
"3. That a church is composed of believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of their faith in Jesus Christ.
'4. That each church has the entire control of its affairs without in- terference on the part of any external power.
"5. That the outward life must be in accordance with such a con- fession of faith, and to this end it is essential that church discipline should be maintained.
"6. That while the State may properly demand obedience in all things not contrary to the law of God, it has no right to set aside the dic- tates of conscience, and compel the humblest individual to surrender his religious views, or to inflict punishment in case such surrender is refused. Every human soul is directly responsible to God."
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These principles were embodied in the Constitution of Faith of seven Anabaptist congregations in London in 1646; in the Confession of Faith of one hundred congregations in London and Wales gathered. in London, in 1689, and adopted by the Baptist Association at Philadelphia on Sep- tember 25th, 1742. There were many Dutch who held to these doctrines and who were in consequence sternly persecuted by the State church at home, and who doubtless sought refuge in America. The political con- sequences of these principles were at the foundation of the intense bitter- ness of all the persecutions of the Anabaptists in their progress from Switzerland down the Rhine to the sea. Robert Barclay's "Concise View of the Chief Principles of the Christian Religion, as professed by the People called Quakers," also embodies the political principles of the Ana- baptists, and made them equally hateful to all sects supporting a State church. Upon these principles Roger Williams laid the foundations of the Commonwealth of Rhode Island, and the English of Gravesend had them embodied in the patent which they obtained from Nicolls-the Mon- mouth Patent.
The Friends, or Quakers, were among the earlier sects to manifest activity in Monmouth county, but they were destined to preserve their identity in less degree than did other sects about them. There is evidence in the journal of George Fox that in 1672 some Friends were building a meeting house in Shrewsbury, but the exact locality remains unknown. George Keith was a leader in this sect, and a preacher, and it was largely through his instrumentality that a meeting house was built at Topanemus, a little west of the site of the present village of Marlborough.
George Keith was one of the strangest and most erratic of the early preachers in America. He was born at Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1645, and was educated at Mareschal College, with the view of becoming a Presby- terian clergyman. Soon after he was graduated, he renounced Presbyter- ianism and joined the Society of Friends. He was then induced by the leading Quakers in his native city to emigrate to America, with the view not only of improving his own temporal condition, but also of aiding in the spread of their doctrines in the New World. He arrived at New York in 1684, and for four years was Surveyor of New Jersey, and during this time he was influential among the Friends. In 1689 he removed to Phil- adelphia, where he conducted a Friends' school, but that occupation was too quiet jand monotonous to suit his notion, and he soon gave it up. We next find him traveling through the country like a Quaker Don Quix- ote trying to win people over to the views of the Society. In New Eng- land he engaged in heated controversies with Increase Mather, Cotton Mather and others, and he made considerable commotion, but, so far as
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can be made out, few converts. On his return to Philadelphia, being in a belligerent mood, he quarreled with the Quakers there, the quarrel being undoubtedly caused by his own infirm temper, his own sense of the fail- ure of his mission, and to some peculiar innovations he advocated, and which none of the brethren seemed disposed to listen to. Then he went to England and laid his whole case before William Penn, but that leader denounced him as an apostate, and Keith was excommunicated from the Society as completely as the gentle Quakers could excommunicate anybody.
Then Keith founded a religious denomination of his own, which he called the Christian or Baptist Quakers (properly called the Keithians), and in which he had opportunity to ventilate some original views he held on the millennium and concerning the transmigration of souls. The Keith- ians, however, did not hold long together, and in 1701 the founder was a full-fledged and enthusiastic minister of the Church of England. Here, probably because years had softened the natural contentiousness of his disposition, or the church itself allowed more latitude for individual views on various doctrinal matters, he found a secure foothold. Nay, more -- he found an opportunity for repaying the Society of Friends for its sum- mary treatment of him. He was sent as a missionary to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with the view of converting as many Quakers as possi- ble, and he afterwards was wont to boast that in that expedition some seven hundred Friends were by his instrumentality received into commun- ion with the English Church. It was then that he visited Long Island. Soon after his return to England he was appointed vicar of Edburton, in Essex, and in that beautiful parish his declining years were spent in tran- quility.
Keith was a man of decidedly superior cast of intellect, an eloquent and attractive speaker and preacher, an able and ready controversialist, and, but for his choleric disposition, would have lived a life of more than ordinary usefulness, and might even have attained to real power and emi- nence. He was a voluminous writer, and in the fifty or more volumes, some in bulky quarto, or pamphlets which we know to have come from his- pen, we can trace the current of his religious views through all their changes. He appears in them all to have been singularly honest, making no attempt to conceal or belittle his own denominational changes, and he even published retractions of his own published writings. His later works were mainly taken up with what he regarded as the fallaciousness of Qua- kerism, and he attacked the Society of Friends from every point of view and with even savagery.
At Shrewsbury the trustees of the Friends' Meeting purchased land in 1695, and erected a brick meeting-house which was occupied until 1816,
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and in 1817 another edifice was erected on an adjoining lot. When the sect divided in 1827-8, the Hicksites came into possession of the meet- ing-house and lot, and this branch survives. The orthodox branch be- came practically extinct.
In what is now Ocean county the Quakers made a firmer footing. A noted figure in the early days was Edward Andrews, an early settler in Tuckerton. He gave no evidence of being a religious man until about 1704, when he became associated with the Friends, to whom (in 1708) he deeded two acres of land whereon to build a meeting-house and estab- lish a graveyard.
In 1715 the monthly meeting of Little Egg Harbor was established, and from this grew a strong influence. For seventy years no other sect found a lodgment within thirty miles of its church home, and no public house or tavern existed. In 1726 Friends from this community founded a monthly meeting at Cape May. The influential people of those days after Edward Andrews, were his sons Jacob and Peter, Isaac Andrews (another son or nephew of Edward Andrews), and Ann Gauntt. All these were traveling preachers, and Hon. George Sykes has said of the Andrews family that it is generally conceded that no other monthly meet- ing in New Jersey has produced three more eminent ministers. Ann Gauntt was also a famous preacher, who extended her ministrations to Long Isl- and, and, in later years, her niece, Ann Willits, traveled up and down the Atlantic coast as a preacher.
This excellent people left a permanent influence for good, although they eventually came to practical extinction as a sect.
The Reformed Dutch Church had its beginning in the Reformed Church of Navesink, afterward known as the Dutch Reformed Church of Freehold and Middletown (having congregations at both places), and of which the old Brick Church of Marlborough is the present immediate representative. Some sort of a church organization was formed in 1699, and for some years afterward ministers came from Long Island to preach at stated times. Among those were Wilhelmus Lupardus, Vincentius An- tonides and Bernardus Freeman, who filled their appointments at cost of considerable inconvenience and no little danger, on account of miserable roads and the passage across the bay in small boats.
October 19th, 1709, a Dutch church with forty-nine communicants was fully organized, and Joseph Morgan was installed as dominie -- the second pastor of a Reformed Church in New Jersey, the first being the Rev. Guillaume Bertholf, who was installed at Hackensack in 1694. Mor- gan was at the time the pastor of the "Old Scots Church," and his call-
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ing to the office of dominie (as the Dutch ministers were called) was owing to his ability to preach in the foreign tongue. The Dutch, being numerically the stronger, and therefore better able to afford him support, were favored with about three-fourths of his time in preaching and visit- ing. He served for about twenty-nine years, during which time he received one hundred persons into the church, and baptized more than five hundred infants. He was finally dismissed for irregularity of life, but eventually recovered himself.
Mr. Morgan was succeeded by the Rev. Gerardus Haeghoort, who preached to two congregations-those at Freehold and Middletown-on alternate Sundays. During his ministry of four years a house of worship was erected on the site now occupied by the Brick Church. For many years it contained no pews, the people sitting on benches, the women in the centre, and the men against the walls.
The Rev. Reynhard Erickzon served a pastorate of twenty-seven years, and was succeeded by the Rev. Benjamin Du Bois, who was settled pastor for the phenomenal period of sixty-three years, by far the longest pastorate in the history of the Reformed Church in America. During this time (about 1764) a new house of worship was erected on the site of the former building in Middletown, and this was known for many years as the "Red Meeting House," and in 1785 the church at Freehold was repaired and improved. During the pastorate of Mr. Du Bois a con- troversy arose as to the language in which the services were to be con- ducted. The Freehold congregation had accepted English with a good grace, but at Middletown opposition was determined and bitter-for some years both elements, foreign and native, were addressed in their own lan- guage, but it was long before the foreign tongue was finally silenced.
To this time the clergymen had been foreigners. Morgan was pre- sumably a Welshman, and he was a Presbyterian besides, and had little in sympathy with the Dutch. On the other hand, Haeghoort was a Hol- lander and Erickzon was a Swede, and these two had little in sympathy with the English speaking people about them. Mr. Du Bois was the first native born minister of the Reformed faith. After him, all his successors were educated in America, and but one was of foreign birth. Their his- tory cannot be minutely followed, but it is to be said that among them were men of great ability and usefulness.
In 1825 the two congregations of Freehold and Middletown, which had maintained one church existence to this time, became two distinct bodies-the First Reformed Church of Freehold, and the Reformed Church of Middletown, this last being now known as the Reformed Church of Holmdel. It is somewhat confusing to now read of the Second Re-
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formed Church of Freehold ( the only one of its denomination in that vil- lage), which was formerly known as the First Reformed Church of the same place, the change having been made to distinguish it from the mother church at the present village of Bradevelt. The congregation in the lat- ter named place, after occupying the old building for more than ninety years, in 1826 erected what is now known as the "Old Brick Church" upon the site of the former edifice, and the first services held within its walls were over the remains of a former revered pastor, the Rev. Benjamin Du Bois. This was under the pastorate of the Rev. Samuel A. Van Vranken.
"The Old Brick Church" is glorious in its memories of a splendid past. It commemorates a church which for the first fifteen years of its ex- istence was the only one of its faith in Monmouth county, and out of which grew eight other independent bodies. In one way it is more elo- quently suggestive of the development of what we term Americanism than is any other religious edifice in southern New Jersey. The people who formed the original church came strangers to a strange land. At their coming, all conditions pointed to a new Holland, wherein they should preserve their customs and their mother tongue. But sovereignty passed to an English monarch, and an English and Scotch immigration set in. To the honor of all these peoples be it said, no antagonism arose. Each devoted its efforts to the highest purpose-that of home-making-and, in the close relationship which grew up between them, each was benefitted by loss of something which was distinctively its own, and by gain of some- thing in its stead. The Englishman and the Scotchman were almost un- conscious of the changes going on in themselves. But the Hollander was painfully aware of change in himself, for he was casting aside the language he had learned from the lips of his mother, and his children were being reared to say their prayers and sing their hymns in words he could scarcely comprehend. There is much of pathos in the thought, and we may well excuse his oft-time impatience, and honor him the more for his sacrifice.
Dr. Van Vranken was the first pastor in Monmouth County to come as a graduate from the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America. This institution was founded in New Brunswick in 1784, and had its origin in a desire to educate young men for the ministry, and obvi- ate the necessity of bringing clergymen from Holland.
The first professor of theology was the Rev. Dr. J. H. Livingston. For many years the infant school was intimately associated with Rutgers College. In 1856 the Peter Hertzog Theological Hall was erected at a cost of $30,700, furnished for the purpose by Mrs. Ann Hertzog, a mem- ber of the Third Reformed Church of Philadelphia, and was named after her deceased husband. In 1873 was erected the James Suydam Hall,
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the gift of James Suydam, Esq., of New York, which contains a Museum of Biblical Antiquities and Curiosities, a Historical Museum, Recitation Rooms and a Gymnasium. In 1874 the Gardner A. Sage Library Building was provided by the gentleman for whom it was named, who also made a gift of $20,000, the income from which is devoted to the purchase of books. The library contains more than 45,000 volumes, 3,000 of which were selected and given by Mrs. Bethune from the library of the Rev. Dr. Bethune. In 1902 the faculty numbered six professors and a number of lecturers, with the Rev. Dr. Samuel M. Woodbridge as President. The number of students in attendance was thirty.
Whatever the controversy, as regards the individuals forming its membership, it appears to be the fact that the Baptist Church of Middle- town was the first of its denomination in New Jersey. Its organization is dated from 1668. The claims that John Bowne was the first preacher have been previously mentioned. Morgan Edwards, in his "History of the Baptists," asserts that Bowne gave the lot on which the first meeting- house was built, and Colonel Holmes names Richard Stout, John Stout, James Grover, Jonathan Bowne, Obadiah Holmes, John Ruckman, John Wilson, Walter Wall, John Cox, Jonathan Holmes, George Mount, Will- iam Layton, William Compton, James Ashton, John Bowne, Thomas Whit- lock and James Grover as those who constituted the original church. That various of the persons named had connection with the church has been questioned.
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